Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Polar bears, sexism and climate science denial

When a science paper about polar bears generates multiple articles on denier blogs you can see it has hit a nerve. This happened recently when a paper was published, with a classic illustration of how deniers reference each other to make out there is dispute about climate change impacts.

The paper was by Jeffrey A Harvey and a bunch of other leading scientists. When I say a bunch, there were fourteen scientists listed as authors, comprising rising stars and heavyweights in the climate science world.

It's fortunate I wasn't able to write about this paper when it was first released because it allowed time to see the numerous articles about it on denier blogs. However, before looking at deniers' various reactions, how about a quick summary of the paper. It's open access and is easy to read. It may help if you understand the analytical techniques used, though that's not essential.

The nuts and bolts of the research won't surprise anyone familiar with the antics of science deniers of any persuasion, whether it's evolution denial, HIV denial or climate science denial.

There are a number of characteristics that differentiate science blogs and science denying blogs. Two that were mentioned in the paper are:

Framing: Science blogs frame the scientific content in their articles so as to inform and educate readers. Science denying blogs frame science so as to mislead their readers. As the authors write: "scientific blogs provide context and associated evidence, whereas denier blogs often remove context or misinterpret examples".

Keystone dominoes: Science blogs will report science that interests the blogger and blog readers. Science denying blogs tend to pluck out topics that the public relate to easily. From the paper: "These topics are used as “proxies” for AGW in general; in other words, they represent keystone dominoes that are strategically placed in front of many hundreds of others, each representing a separate line of evidence for AGW. By appearing to knock over the keystone domino, audiences targeted by the communication may assume all other dominoes are toppled in a form of “dismissal by association.” Proponents of creationism and intelligent design use the same strategy..."

I'll add two more techniques, of the several others that I've seen:

Circular Self-Referencing: Science blogs are typically littered with links to scientific papers and other reputable sources of information across a wide spectrum. Science denying blogs typically link to each other rather than to scientific articles. In that way, the deniosphere is a self-contained echo chamber, with few linkages with real science.

Attacking scientists instead of science: Science articles on science blogs tend to focus on research - observations and analysis - more so than personalities. Science denying blogs by contrast put little stock in evidence, or claim it is "fake". They often prefer to attack scientists as people rather than discuss the fruits of their efforts.

Analysing science and science denial blogs

To illustrate how science denying blogs use framing and "keystone dominoes" to mislead their readers, the authors analysed 90 blogs that mentioned both polar bears and sea ice, 45 science and 45 science denial. (The 90 websites listed in the supplementary information were described as blogs, however there were a few that I wouldn't describe as a blog. Not enough to quibble over.)

Each blog was coded for stated positions on these two topics (Arctic ice extent and polar-bear status). The six codes identified were the following:

sea-ice extent is on average declining rapidly in the Arctic;

sea-ice extent is decreasing only marginally, is not decreasing significantly, or is currently recovering in the Arctic;

changes in sea-ice extent in the Arctic are due to natural variability, and it is impossible to predict future conditions;

polar bears are threatened with extinction by present and future AGW;

polar bears are not threatened with extinction by present and future AGW; and

polar bears will adapt to any future changes in Arctic ice extent whether because of AGW or natural variability.

We also collected every peer-reviewed scientific paper that we could find that investigated both polar bears and sea ice in our search process (92 papers) and scored their positions for the same six statements. The scores for both blogs and papers were analyzed, and a principal component analysis was used to visualize their relations.

If you're not familiar with principal component analysis, there's a neat article by by Victor Powell, with text by Lewis Lehe, which is illustrated with interactive demonstrations.

The diagram below is Figure 2 from the paper, and shows the results of the principal component analysis.

Principal component analysis of scores for six statements, three about Arctic ice and three about polar bears, and citations of Susan Crockford. Scores were extracted from 90 blogs and 92 peer reviewed scientific papers. The blogs were color-coded according their group in a cluster analysis using Manhattan distances and Ward's clustering. The papers were classified as controversial when they evoked critical comments and discussion in the peer-reviewed literature. The ellipses around the data points indicate 95% normal probability. The first PCA axis clearly shows the consensus gap, with fully separated positions for the scientific literature and blogs that deny problems with Arctic ice or polar bears. Science-based blogs, on the other hand, take positions that completely overlap with the peer-reviewed literature. Note that even the small number of more “controversial” scientific papers still exhibit less extreme positions on the first axis than those expressed in the majority of denial blogs. The second PCA axis represents a much smaller amount of variation that appears to represent the presumed adaptive potential of the bears. Source: Fig 2 Harvey17

What the authors found won't surprise you. Science blogs reported what the published literature reports: sea ice is declining and therefore polar bears are threatened. Denier blogs claims were inconsistent with scientific evidence, and reported that bears aren't threatened and sea ice isn't disappearing or if it is, it's natural (naturally).

What's more, rather than drawing on evidence from published scientific work, about 80% of the denier blogs promoted the writings of one person, Susan Crockford, who rejects the notion that polar bears are threatened, to bolster their denial. You'd think that remarkable given that many deniers appear to think that most scientists reject science (get your head around that). If you've spent any time on denier blogs you'll have realised that reliance on one person is not uncommon for science deniers. What is more remarkable is that Dr Crockford hasn't published anything in the peer-reviewed literature about the impact of declining ice on polar bears. (Her PhD thesis, which puts forward some, um, novel ideas about pulsating thyroid hormones and evolution of domestic vertebrates, mentions polar bears in passing.)

As I said, this promotion of a single source and rejection of evidence and the overwhelming majority of scientific research is one of the tactics science deniers use to misinform. Think Willie Soon and "it's the sun", Nils Axel-Morner and his sea level rise denial, and former resident WUWT pseudoscientist Bob Tisdale and his "it's El Nino". The former two have some publications on their subjects, unlike Susan and Bob.

If you want to know more about the study and its findings, I suggest you read it.

No support for the lone polar bear foe on denier blogs

The protests from deniers came thick and fast. As usual, in writing their articles they amply illustrated the reliability of the findings.

In all the denier articles I looked at, not one of them provided any scientific support for the ideas promoted by Susan Crockford. Not one could find any scientist who agreed with her. Thus providing further evidence supporting the findings of the authors of Harvey17.

Slime from Anthony Watts at WUWT

At WUWT, Anthony Watts posted not one, not two, but three articles. In his first, he mostly ignored the lead author, skipped over the next eight authors, and chose to promote the 10th and 14th authors - Drs Stephan Lewandowsky and Michael Mann respectively. He adopted the "attacking scientists" technique I mentioned above. Anthony knew those two names would resonate with his readers, who haven't heard of most scientists. They are favourite "Serengeti strategy" targets at WUWT. (I swear that some of Anthony Watts readers think there are no more than half a dozen climate scientists in the world.) Anthony posted a photo of each of them, overlaid with the word "slimed", which is what Anthony does for a living (slime scientists).

Deniers are ashamed of their denial

Naturally, it's all about Anthony. I can't for the life of me figure out why he's offended at his blog being called a denier blog. Deniers are his target audience, the more hard-core and conspiracy-theorising the better. You'd think he'd welcome the publicity. Perhaps he does. He wrote:

...for a science journal to use the word “denier” is quite troubling. It is mind-blowing to me that a journal would publish “denier” used as a pejorative label with a broad brush. They expose themselves to legal issues of defamation in doing so.

Anthony Watts, owner of the "the world's most viewed" climate scientist defaming blog, was worried about a journal exposing itself to defamation? For calling deniers "deniers"?

WUWT validates the results of Harvey17

The evidence Anthony Watts offered to show Harvey17 was all wrong in fact did the opposite. It corroborated Harvey17. His evidence was, you guessed it, Susan Crockford! Ha! the very same unpublished source that the authors said was the main source for 80% of the denier blogs they analysed! Her biggest complaint was that none of the authors had commented on her recent not peer-reviewed paper. In fact as I write this, only one person in all the world has made a comment under her paper.

It strikes me that her paper was based on a flawed premise. What Susan was arguing was that because polar bears haven't yet shown a substantial decline in numbers (according to Susan), the estimate of their decline over the next 30 to 50 years won't happen.

That is also typical of science deniers. You'll recall WUWT from time to time has articles claiming that because [insert projection to 2100] hasn't yet happened, it will never happen.

I'll add that I cannot find where Susan got her hypothesis from. I've looked at the references she quoted but it doesn't stack up with what she claims. She seems to have got her basic premise wrong by substituting a September Arctic sea ice average (or maybe even the September minimum) for summer Arctic sea ice average. She seems to be claiming that from 2007 to 2016, the sea ice area was what was projected for 2050 and polar bears haven't disappeared off the face of the northern Earth, therefore they won't. That's just silly - on all counts.

That sloppiness is typical of Susan apparently. In the self-defense she wrote at WUWT, she said (my emphasis):

The long list of co-authors joining in on this attack includes several psychologists, one of whom has written similar papers before, as well as serial-litagator [sic]/climate change champion Michael Mann:

Wrong. I don't know where she got the "several" from. I saw only one cognitive scientist in the list of authors. Most of the fourteen were scientists who do research in climate, ecology, or other environmental sciences. You'll also have noticed, if you were in any doubt, how that statement from Susan Crockford puts her fairly and squarely in the science denying camp.

Larry Kummer, dominoes, and the case of the wrong Crockford

The second protest at WUWT was an article by Larry Kummer. He too was basing his protest on Susan Crockford and her "kill off the polar bear" meme. He too showed that the authors of Harvey17 were spot on. It seems that nobody at WUWT could find anyone to support Susan's notion that polar bears won't suffer when the summer ice disappears and takes their food supply with it. He too takes exception to the author's use of the term denier. Apparently deniers don't just deny science, they deny themselves (and prefer euphemisms).

The other thing that Larry does is just what the authors point out that deniers commonly do. He picked out some random predictions (not from scientific papers, but from media reports or blogs), and used them as "keystone dominoes" to imply that because someone once said something or the other in a newspaper article, all of climate science published in scientific journals can be rejected!

Go on, follow the first link. The "details here" link shows that just as the authors wrote, Susan does not claim any peer-reviewed publications on the topic of polar bears.

Now follow the second link to the claimed citation through to its origin. It's not Susan Crockford's paper that was cited, it was authored by Nicola Jane Crockford of The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds · International, and the paper has nothing at all to do with polar bears.

He also pointed out that the authors found what I found when I read her not peer-reviewed article that she put so much weight upon. He quoted them:

A primary approach of Crockford’s and other denier blogs is to frame uncertainty by focusing on the present and to question the accuracy of future predictions — implying that the rapid loss of Arctic ice recorded over the past 40 years induced by AGW cannot serve as a guide to future conditions.

Well, in my view the authors were being kind. As I wrote earlier, her work is basically arguing that because what is expected to happen over the coming several decades hasn't happened yet, it won't happen over the coming several decades.

Josh's trench warfare against scientists

The third WUWT protest was a cartoon by Josh, who gets a bit of publicity by having Anthony Watts promote his efforts. It was something about trench warfare mixed with wishful thinking that research funding is going to stop. The misplaced argument he was making was that scientists are only in it for the money and will flee when it dries up. The implication being, of course, that global warming would stop if only scientists would stop studying climate. His cartoons depicted Professors Mann and Lewandowsky, using the "attack the scientists" fallback tactic of climate science deniers.

You'll notice Josh is very hung up on money. Fear of losing it is one of the main reasons stated for opposing science. (It doesn't make sense to me either, given that most of the wealth and well-being today is because of science, not in spite of it.)

Tom Fuller, sexism and the GWPF

There have been other protests, but the only other one I'll mention is from a bloke of dubious reputation called Tom Fuller who used to pester people on science blogs. He chose the equally dubious Global Warming Policy Forum to promote his article. (It was originally posted on another dubious but more obscure and even sillier blog run by half a dozen adolescent types who erroneously fancy themselves as clever deniers.)

Tom apparently couldn't find anyone to support Susan's claims that polar bears don't need protection and will survive without sea ice. Instead he took a different tack. As you know, there has been a flurry of claims that prominent figures have a history of sexual harassment and predation and worse - some with basis, some probably without. Tom saw the bandwagon and decided to hitch a ride. Because Susan Crockford's work was found to be the main source of polar bear denial abounding in cyberspace, he would mount his trusty steed and gallop in to defend her honour. He alleged that the authors were guilty of sexual harassment.

What he's effectively saying is that women are the weaker sex and need big brave men like Tom Fuller, and the GWPF (and half a dozen puerile adolescents) to come to their rescue - but only if they are science deniers. (The GWPF must be one of the more sexist organisations around. Its Forum has no women on its board. The Foundation has no women on its 25 member advisory panel, and only one woman on its board).

It's all a bit rich, particularly given that sexist men are grossly over-represented in climate science denier ranks.

I must point out that Tom Fuller also uses a variation of the technique that the authors referred to - the "keystone domino". He picked out quotes various scientists and climate bloggers have made about the work of men and women - carefully selecting mild criticisms of male deniers and stronger criticisms of female deniers. (He included a quote from one climate blogger who was not an author of the paper for some reason. I guess he had to stretch to fill his silly article.)

Like the other articles, Tom claims the authors lied when they wrote:

Notably, as of this writing, Crockford has neither conducted any original research nor published any articles in the peer-reviewed literature on polar bears.

However, also like the others, Tom was unable to provide any evidence to the contrary. Susan hasn't done any original research on polar bears, or published any articles on polar bears in the peer-reviewed literature. Any polar bear research she has done is not published in any peer-reviewed journal, is based on other people's original research and only resulted in blog articles (fodder for science deniers) and one "not peer-reviewed" paper. (Even her PhD, which mentions polar bears very briefly and only in passing, is nothing more than highly speculative thyroid hormone notions in among a literature review.)

Deniers made me do it

Frankly, I didn't intend for this article to focus on Susan Crockford. Deniers made me do it :)

It was quite unavoidable, given the way the denier blog articles spent so much time on Susan Crockford and her articles in an apparent attempt to disprove the finding that denier blogs predominately rely on Susan Crockford's blog and articles to bolster their case that polar bears should be left to rot. (You can breathe now.)

Supplementary Information

Some of the denier bloggers were upset that they didn't see their blog listed as supplementary information. I've been informed that it was meant to be posted with the article, and will be put on the web in a data repository in the near future (if not already). It's already available on the website of one of the coauthors, Bart Verheggen. It lists all 90 blogs/websites and all the 92 scientific publications referred to in the paper. It also has a bit more detail about the methodology.

This year the sea ice is too far away for the mother polar bears

As I was finishing this article, I came across this tweet from Prof Andrew Derocher, who has been studying polar bears for 34 years.

Svalbard sea ice cover 3rd lowest on record. Hopen Island, where female #polarbears used to den, won't be available to them this year. Sea ice is too far away. They can use areas further north but the options are fewer over time with so little ice. pic.twitter.com/46MrjRU5n5

From the WUWT comments

Please excuse me for reposting this horrible WUWT "thought". In the light of Tom Fuller's article in particular, I figured it's relevant. Joel O'Bryan is one who gets his kicks from what he probably regards as titillating, and arguably defamatory, comments. (He's AC/DC, and has written in a not dissimilar vein about me, too.)

November 29, 2017 at 4:55 pm
"Another strategy is to selectively attack prominent lines of research providing compelling evidence of AGW. Mann and colleagues’ (1998) “hockey-stick” graph (see also Mann 2012), in which temperature reconstructions have been made over the past millennium, is a prime example of the latter. “
So when your research is crap and filled with little statistical tricks…. yeah… you’re little [pruned] Mann.
I think Little Mann is still smarting from how M&M showed he and his hockey stick were a complete fraud. He got spanked, He continues to get spanked. Everyone in the field surely must know that by now. Those that don’t care are simply as dishonest as Little Mann.
Man’s day of reckoning is coming.
Like Matt Lauer’s.
Like Harvery Weinstein.
Like Jerry Sandusky.

Most of the rest of the comments are too silly. Among the worst are accusations of bullying a poor little innocent girl - from deniers who do nothing but bully on the blog of someone who specialises in defaming scientists, a blog dominated with comments from sexist men. Here's an example from some random bot using the name of Dave Fair:

December 2, 2017 at 2:02 pmThe sort of personal attacks and lack of evidence contained in this peer reviewed “paper” is one of the reasons I began questioning CAGW.

I mean how unaware does one have to be to ignore all the personal attacks on denier blogs, ignore the evidence in this particular paper, and write utter nonsense. That comment goes way beyond confirmation bias, it can only be described as utterly delusional or pure bottery.

41 comments:

"So when your research is crap and filled with little statistical tricks…. yeah… you’re little [pruned] Mann.I think Little Mann is still smarting from how M&M showed he and his hockey stick were a complete fraud."

Funny how deniers will never read past the first paragraph of that article. Or, if they do, won't read it for comprehension. It could be one of the fist instances of what they consider to be "fake news" because it runs against their ideology.

This is an excellent and detailed forensic dissection Sou. In some ways I suspect that this paper will be greater honey to the denialist flies than was Lewandowski's first few forays into denialism, so it's good that there's been a rapid documentation of the widespread fulminating Denialati response to it.

I tried to post a relatively comment on ATTP's site a few days ago, but for some reason it disappeared into the æther. The conversation has moved on greatly since then, but for a mention of the history between Jeff and Fuller it might be worth repeating here, and I think the reference to another recent paper in ecology is germane to the ", but, sexism!1!!eleventy-one!!" faux outrage...

"So Harvey’s right. Something is wrong. Her influence is not in proportion to what it should be. "

This, exactly.

Then, from jacksmith4tx:

"The internet is your own personal jesus. The internet knows who you are and what you have clicked on for as long as you have been on the web. It will try to point you to what you seem to like."

This too, although the internet is not yet sentient and doesn't use sophistication in selecting political bias in presenting topical matter. I know from my own experience in trying to substantiate various claims that search engines are fickle in giving weight to accurate data even if one conscientiously eschews the Nocturn Allies of the interweb. Which is one of the take-homes from Jeff's paper - people get to say crap in response to science, and that crap sticks all over the place, obscuring the appropriate discovery of objective facts as they can be best ascertained.

Tom Fuller is a classic example of this in practice, and it's no surprise that he's manifested in the comments above. Indeed I'd not be surprised if Fuller's amongst the reasons that Jeff wrote this paper in the first place - Jeff and I had quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with Fuller at Bart Verheggen's a few years ago on exactly the subject of this paper... It got to the point that I have a folder full of material myself to document the same thing that Jeff's published, and it's not without some not-so-small degree of wryness that when I first read this paper I rued not getting my manure together. Reading through Jeff's paper I reckon that they did a good job of it, for what they're demonstrating, and it will be useful in the ongoing discussion involving the interpretation of science.

So whilst some may be personally underwhelmed, there is real value in documenting this phenomenon. Those that doesn't perceive it may simply be displaying their unfamiliarity and/or disdain for the discipline significance of this work.

On the manufactured furor over Crockford, smallbluemike summed it up in the first post - it's an exercise in bad faith. It just happens that Crockford is female and this provides the deniers, distractors and dissemblers an avenue for criticism of the criticism of their own tactics. It does not benefit the cause of gender egality in science to make these spurious gotchas - true gender equality means that female researchers are as open to criticism as they are to opportunity when they work. Had Crockford been male the analysis in this paper would be identical, just as it would have been if Jeff had put his second author first in a prescient attempt to emasculate the righteous umbrage of Fuller's (and others') thimblerigging.

Another recent attack on perceived male bias in ecology was the fulmination over the results of Franck Courchamp's & Corey Bradshaw's paper:

The authors acknowledged potential limitations of their first pass through the literature and indicated that they're working on refinement, but it wasn't enough to prevent railing against Courchamp because there is a lack of female-authored papers in the list. One wonders if the detractors really do have an unnecessary bee in their bonnets about the gender skew, or if they are simply taking a swipe to make themselves look good. Either way, fallacious criticism of gender bias in science devalues and demeans discussion of real examples of male misbehaviour and misogyny. Such unjustified wolf-crying should be identified, confronted and discouraged when it occurs, so that genuine occurrences of sexism can be as efficiently expunged from our anachronistically androphilic institutions as soon as possible.

Harry, there are a number of people have chosen to carve out a niche for themselves in the denier market, probably thinking "small fish, small pond". Susan isn't the only one to do that. If they have any capacity for self-reflection, at the end of their day they might ask themselves if fighting to annihilate precious life on this planet was really how they wanted to be remembered.

Yes, the bad faith actors astound me. They will be recorded by history as "the bad guys", like the ones who continued to promote smoking, lead in petrol, CFCs and DDT long after the rest of world had realized the dangers and moved on.

What will their children and grandchildren think of them? Do they care?

The complaints about personal attacks are puzzling: perhaps the WUWT fanboys feel the attacks should have included death threats similar to those that genuine climate scientists receive from climate change deniers.

"I tried to post a relatively comment on ATTP's site a few days ago, but for some reason it disappeared into the æther."

Same thing happened to me about 2 weeks ago. I tried to post on ATTP, and it just disappeared. Then I tried to post again, no dice. I wrote to ATTP about it, but never got a response to that either :-(

About disappearing comments, that's been reported here from time to time as well. Only solution I can think of is to write it in a text file then copy it, so if it disappears, all your time and efforts aren't lost. (Sometimes using a different browser helps, as does clearing the browser cache.)

"I missed this. Apologies if I did not respond to an email, but I'm normally quite good about replying and I don't recall missing one. It's possible, but it certainly wasn't intentional."

Not a big deal, ATTP. I just try to make people aware of that Deep Climate article (see my first post above) whenever a denier has a go at Michael Mann for his supposed 'fraud'. I was trying to do the same on your site in the 'Mertonian norms' thread, but Magma eventually got there with a link to the very same article.

It's all very well reviewing the politics of polar bear research, but you overlooked the actual facts. The fact is that polar bears are thriving with less sea ice, and their population has never been so high in recorded history. In effect this article does not discuss the science and data at all and is merely yet another ad hominem attack against Susan Crockford.

Hi Derek - I'd say you haven't understood either the paper or the article. Both are about climate science denial. They both address where deniers get their crazy notions from and why they are oblivious to scientific findings.

It's denier blogs who are trying to make this all about Susan. The source deniers rely upon could have been anywhere, except scientific publications :(

BTW Derek, the latest report (December last year) reports polar bear status unchanged and as "vulnerable". Co-authors, you may note, include the people whose emails were given to Susan by Chris Horner. I'm surprised she doesn't know that scientists often discuss and debate science using email. Susan Crockford hasn't done much research herself but even so I'd have expected she knew more about how scientists communicate.

There has been a denier meme about polar bear populations thriving for some years. It was based on a short term population increase after a hunting ban stopped the Sarah Palins of this world shooting polar bears just for laughs.

Polar bear is food up here. The pelts are also fairly valuable, though prices have fallen lately they still fetch several thousand dollars.

If you're a guide, one or two hunting trips taking wealthy Russians on a hunt will provide you income for the year.

There's a problem that the biologists propose hunting license numbers based on science, but the politicians increase them to win votes. In part it's the argument that Crockford makes (which is unoriginal -- every overhunting/overfishing event has come up with the same): right now you can find bears so there's clearly plenty and we have nothing to worry about.

"... he is wilfully ignoring the science and the facts. But he is unaware and unable to understand the consequences."Sure, that is the alternative diagnosis. Dimwitted, Alzheimer, you name it. But it puts the disrespect at the wrong place. In fact, quoted statement is antithetical. To wilfully ignore the science and the facts involved the necessity of at least a little intelligencen. Hence: of some responsibility. Put the latter where it belongs, then.

Googling on Reggie Blowtorch brought up stuff about a poster who predicted Arctic Ice would disappear in 2013. Is that the guy we are talking about? I have never seen anybody here - or on any other credible climate blog - make such a prediction. I'd guess he'd be either some particularly stupid troll, or else a fake warmist created by a denier blogger to provide a phoney example of a warmist being proven wrong.

The most deplorable unwanted advance on a female graduate student in the history of our museum of archaeology & anthropology was made by a polar bear who has yet to be outed or prosecuted for this egregious Title IX violation, although the Labrador RCMP's investigation of the site of the incident led to a coroners verdict of death by devourment, and the exhonoration of her thesis advisor after a great deal of paperwork.

How this all failed to attract the attention of Tim Ball remains a mystery.

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All you need to know about WUWT

WUWT insider Willis Eschenbach tells you all you need to know about Anthony Watts and his blog, WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). As part of his scathing commentary, Wondering Willis accuses Anthony Watts of being clueless about the blog articles he posts. To paraphrase:

Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure.

Definition of Denier (Oxford): A person who denies something, especially someone who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence.
‘a prominent denier of global warming’
‘a climate change denier’

Alternative definition: A former French coin, equal to one twelfth of a Sou, which was withdrawn in the 19th century. Oxford. (The denier has since resurfaced with reduced value.)